Hellloooo writers! Today's post is all about YOU. You know you have to promote yourself and your books, right? You know that even if you write the best story in the world, if people aren't reading and talking about it, then you won't sell more than a handful of copies, right? I'm sure you already do a lot of the typical: a Facebook and Twitter presence, blogging, maybe taking out ads on various sites. But check out these helpful links as well:
The Romance Studio is having a fantastic sale through July 7th: Buy 1, Get 9 Free. Yes, a total of 10 ads for the price of only 1! If you write in the romance genre, this is a great deal for you.
(I also want to mention that The Romance Studio is a great place for members to post news, because members' posts go straight onto the main page, which means as soon as you post, anyone clicking on TRS will see your news at once. That's great bang for your buck, esp. when membership costs only $15/year. Even if you only paid for that, and not a single other ad through them, you could still post announcements on their main page whenever you wanted to and hit a great target audience.)
Hercules Editing and Consulting will produce trailers for anything you want to sell, for only $35! That's a huge bargain - and you don't even have to do any of the work. They'll look over your product/book/blurb and reviews and then make the trailer for you. Any genre, any length - actually, any product at all. It doesn't even have to be a book you're selling! Check out their sample work right here.
Pay With a Tweet looks to be an interesting, non-traditional way of marketing your work. Using social media is a huge YES in today's world, and this website lets you "sell" your book to any consumer who tweets about it. Considering many people have Twitter followers numbering in the 1000s, news about your book could exponentially reach 10s of 1000s of people.
There are many other ways to promote yourself, but keep in mind to do what you're comfortable with and what you can afford. And always remember, above all, to keep writing! The best promotion of all is talking about your next book :)
Wednesday, July 03, 2013
Monday, July 01, 2013
Monday Mentionables: Celebrating Digital Books!
Happy Monday, and happy July 1st! Can't believe we're already well into summer (it doesn't seem like it with all that rain out there, at least in our neck of the woods!).
Had a lovely vacation in Bermuda last week with hubby. We had gorgeous weather and ate and drank like kings, so now it's back to the gym and the diet for me! We took a cruise ship out of Cape Liberty, NJ, which gave us a day and a half of sailing time on either side of visiting Bermuda...and I finally got a chance to catch up on my reading!
Even better, I loved seeing that so many other people were doing the same, and in a variety of genres (yes I peeked at book covers when I could - wouldn't you?) I saw everything from romance to biography to suspense to horror to young adult to military. And interestingly, readers were about evenly split between those who were reading actual paper books, and those who were reading on an eReader or tablet.
Which brings me to my big mention of the day: it's time to celebrate digital books! Yes, I know many of you still prefer to have a book in hand when you read. Many times, so do I (and so did I, on the ship!...because I forgot to charge my Nook before we left. But anyway...). But it's worth mentioning a couple of things today:
1. More books than ever are released in digital format first, before they go to print. Sometimes they're released in digital format only.
2. It's super convenient to load your digital reading device with 100s of books and carry around something that weighs, oh, less than a pound. Think about how much 100 books would weigh if you tried to bring them all to the beach!
3. Digital books almost always cost less to purchase than paper books (and many of them are also available for lending through your local library, if you're not a book buyer at all)/
4. Some presses contract that books will go to print depending on digital sales...which means if you really, really want to see your favorite authors' books on your shelves, go ahead and buy their digital book when it comes out first, to help boost sales and make it to print. (I say this in shameless self-promotion because Beacon of Love is contracted this way. I have a sales threshold to meet before it will be released in print. So can you help me out?)
5. July is officially being heralded as Digital First Read-a-Thon Month by The Book Binge and some of its fellow blogs. What does this mean? The folks over there are encouraging readers to try and read as many digital-first books (see #4, above) as they can during this month, to raise awareness about all those great books and authors who are digitally published but perhaps not yet print published. And what's even better? Every single day, you have multiple chances to win books and prizes!!! The link is right at the beginning here of #5, but I'll try to repost it on a regular basis so you can remember to stop by.
And...I'm the featured author TOMORROW at Tracy's Place, so please stop by, check out my excerpt, leave a comment, and generally support this great effort, would you?
Thanks and have a great Monday!
Had a lovely vacation in Bermuda last week with hubby. We had gorgeous weather and ate and drank like kings, so now it's back to the gym and the diet for me! We took a cruise ship out of Cape Liberty, NJ, which gave us a day and a half of sailing time on either side of visiting Bermuda...and I finally got a chance to catch up on my reading!
Even better, I loved seeing that so many other people were doing the same, and in a variety of genres (yes I peeked at book covers when I could - wouldn't you?) I saw everything from romance to biography to suspense to horror to young adult to military. And interestingly, readers were about evenly split between those who were reading actual paper books, and those who were reading on an eReader or tablet.
Which brings me to my big mention of the day: it's time to celebrate digital books! Yes, I know many of you still prefer to have a book in hand when you read. Many times, so do I (and so did I, on the ship!...because I forgot to charge my Nook before we left. But anyway...). But it's worth mentioning a couple of things today:
1. More books than ever are released in digital format first, before they go to print. Sometimes they're released in digital format only.
2. It's super convenient to load your digital reading device with 100s of books and carry around something that weighs, oh, less than a pound. Think about how much 100 books would weigh if you tried to bring them all to the beach!
3. Digital books almost always cost less to purchase than paper books (and many of them are also available for lending through your local library, if you're not a book buyer at all)/
4. Some presses contract that books will go to print depending on digital sales...which means if you really, really want to see your favorite authors' books on your shelves, go ahead and buy their digital book when it comes out first, to help boost sales and make it to print. (I say this in shameless self-promotion because Beacon of Love is contracted this way. I have a sales threshold to meet before it will be released in print. So can you help me out?)
5. July is officially being heralded as Digital First Read-a-Thon Month by The Book Binge and some of its fellow blogs. What does this mean? The folks over there are encouraging readers to try and read as many digital-first books (see #4, above) as they can during this month, to raise awareness about all those great books and authors who are digitally published but perhaps not yet print published. And what's even better? Every single day, you have multiple chances to win books and prizes!!! The link is right at the beginning here of #5, but I'll try to repost it on a regular basis so you can remember to stop by.
And...I'm the featured author TOMORROW at Tracy's Place, so please stop by, check out my excerpt, leave a comment, and generally support this great effort, would you?
Thanks and have a great Monday!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)